


Oxy-Mormon

by FlightyWren94



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Internalized Homophobia, LGBTQ Themes, Religion, Religious Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:47:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24667111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlightyWren94/pseuds/FlightyWren94
Summary: For AUREA Creates Pride, I decided to chronicle my experiences as a queer member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
Kudos: 5





	Oxy-Mormon

**Author's Note:**

> This is an overview of my experiences as a queer member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. As such, religion and discrimination as well as internalized homophobia will be addressed in this story. If any of that bothers you, please take care of yourself and skip this one! This is also based one hundred percent on my own experiences. Don't take this as an umbrella experience for all LGBTQ+ members of the Church.

I feel like people think of Mormons and of LGBTQ+ people as being completely separate from each other. Or at least, not compatible with each other.

Members of the Church often don’t seem to think that any of their fellow members might be LGBTQ+. Meanwhile, most of the LGBTQ+ people I’ve met have been skeptical when I tell them that I’m a member of the Church. But I’m a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, formerly known as the Mormon Church, and I’m queer. Those two things aren’t separate for me. My experience as a member of the Church has been colored by me being queer. My experience as a queer woman has been irreversibly affected by my membership in the Church.

Everyone’s experiences are different. No two people are the same and we all have different views of even the same events in our lives. But I wanted to share my experience and how they’ve shaped me.

When I was ten, my family moved into the first-floor apartment of a two-family house. A mother and daughter lived in the apartment above us. We talked to them, but not very much. The daughter was a couple years younger than my youngest sibling, so it wasn’t like we were friends at school or anything. They were a perfectly normal family, but they were a source of confusion for me, both at the time and for years following.

See, the mom had a friend who lived with them. That was what my parents always called her. They told me that the woman was the mom’s friend and she lived with the mother and daughter. You can probably see where this is going.

On a few occasions, our upstairs neighbors would watch me and my sibling to help out my parents, who were both working at the time.

The first few times, we stayed in the daughter’s room or in the living room while we were in their apartment. It was only on one particular afternoon that I realized something was off about the apartment: it only had two bedrooms. The daughter slept in what was mean tot be the dining room while the first bedroom was set up as a containment area for the family’s many pet lizards and snakes. It was on this afternoon that I got a glimpse into the second bedroom, where the mother slept. Or at least, that was what I assumed at the time. And, as I thought about it, I became confused.

I knew that two adults and one child lived in the apartment. I knew that the two women were friends and friends didn’t share beds. So, where did the mother’s friend sleep? I always had that wonderment in the back of my mind whenever I thought of that little family for years afterward.

Years later—and much longer than it should have taken me to figure it out—I was talking to my sibling about that family. I brought up how confused I’d been about where the mother’s friend had slept.

“They were girlfriends, Kim.” My sibling said in a way that indicated they thought I should know better by now. “Didn’t you know?”

Of course, I didn’t know. My parents had never talked about anything LGBTQ+ while we were growing up. It just didn’t happen.

I feel like a lot of Christian parents think that, if they don’t mention LGBTQ+ topics, there’s no way for their children to end up being LGBTQ+. It’s been long since proven not to be a disease or disorder a person can catch. We’re born this way. Not talking about it doesn’t make our orientation magically go away. I feel that, if my parents had talked about these topics growing up, I would have been able to avoid years of experiences that have now ingrained my mind with internalized homophobia and aphobia.

I first read Twilight around the age of thirteen and fell in love with it straight away. Yeah, I was one of those teenagers and, if you’re wondering how this ties into my gay awakening, read on.

I was an incredibly sheltered girl who didn’t know that the series was problematic from start to finish. I just thought it was so incredibly romantic and wouldn’t it be amazing if someone loved me like that?

Through Twilight and Stephanie Meyer’s website, I found fan fiction. I was hooked immediately. At first, I stuck with Twilight exclusively. It held my attention bound for about a year.

I was about fourteen when I accidentally stumbled upon an Alice/Bella fan fiction in the Twilight fandom. Before that, I’d stuck very reliably to straight fan fiction. I didn’t even know that slash fiction (fan fiction that features a man/man or woman/woman couple) existed. I didn’t know that two people of the same gender could be together romantically or sexually. It wasn’t that I’d ignored the possibility, it’s that the idea had never been presented to me, period.

I was immediately turned off what I was reading. I had thought I was getting into an Edward/Bella fic and was disappointed, but also weirded out. How could anyone write that? Why would anyone want to read it? I was fourteen and couldn’t fathom the idea of two women being together. I quickly clicked out of the fic and, after a few days, promptly forgot about it.

The thing is, even though LGBTQ+ topics hadn’t been brought up in my house growing up, there was definitely an unspoken expectation from my church. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is famous for their stance on what we call the Law of Chastity.

I remember lessons at church on the Law of Chastity. They started out a little vague, for younger audiences, but the older I got, the more specific the topic became. This particular principle of the gospel strictly prohibits sexual relationships outside of marriage between a man and a woman. We were taught this from a young age, raised with the expectation that we would grow up and get married to a faithful man (in my case) in one of the Church’s many temples around the world. The words “gay” or “same-sex marriage” or “LGBT” were never spoken until I was nearly an adult.

As noted earlier, the lack of discussion didn’t help make me straight. It only served to make things more difficult as I struggle with my identity. For years, I felt like something was off, but was unable to put my finger on it.

As I got older, I got involved in more fandoms. After Twilight, I got introduced to Star Trek, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and many others. If I watched it or read it, I wanted to read fan fiction of it. I had unrestricted access to the internet at the time—both parents busy with either work or school and unaware of what I was getting up to on the computer. I ran rampant through sites like fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own. And, as my love for fic and media grew, my curiosity grew as well.

I think it all started with Sherlock Holmes. I think. It’s been nearly twelve years, and everything’s blurred together after so long. But I remember the excitement of reading love stories written about Dr. John Watson and his beloved Sherlock Holmes. It gave me just as much excitement as reading books that centered around heterosexual couples. I loved imagining them falling in love, growing old together. It was something I’d put in the back of my mind, but it came to the front again as I delved deeper and deeper into the world of fan fiction.

These writings were where I learned about LGBTQ+ ideas for the first time. Not the best place to do so, I’ll acknowledge, but no one else was teaching me about them. So, I read and, as I read, I began to realize that there were more options than I’d been raised to believe. Men could love men. Women could love women. Any other genders weren’t even a blip on my radar. It was another thing I’d have to learn about on my own.

During all of this, I kept going to church. I kept being told that good girls plan to marry a man in the temple. Good girls don’t start to think about girls the way they’re supposed to think about boys. I loved my Young Women’s leaders—I still do—but these lessons always seemed to be taught in an “I know I don’t have to worry about any of you having trouble with this” kind of way. I like to think they weren’t. Either way, I was left feeling confused and a little isolated, even as I got closer and closer to realizing myself for who I really am.

The thing is, looking back, I feel like I should have realized it sooner. I had a friend growing up. She was geeky and had a dry sense of humor and I just loved her so much. I thought about snuggling with her sometimes or kissing her cheek. A few times, when I was older, I had the thought of kissing her on the lips. Just a little, before I quashed it viciously.

I might feel like I should have realized sooner, that in some way I wasted time I could have spent being more comfortable in my skin, but something I’ve learned over the years is that there is no such thing as wasted time. We all have to have the experiences we do in order to get to where we are now. If that takes a little longer for some people, no biggie. But, yeah, I sometimes feel like I should have known a lot sooner than I did.

As I got older, the lessons at church got more specific.

All of my Young Women’s presidency for the majority of my teenage years were fairly recent converts. I’ll forever be grateful that I had them, who understood what life outside the Church was like, and not some of the other leaders I’ve heard horror stories about.

Our president and her councilors were more than willing to tackle tough topics that others would have shied away from. They made it clear that following the gospel was a choice and a hard one, that being a disciple of Christ didn’t magically make life easier. They’d had their own doubts, their own problems with certain principles of the gospel or church policies, and they were more than willing to share their experiences with us. They were fantastic.

There’s always a “but” though, isn’t there? No matter how great and how wonderful someone is, no matter how much good they did for you at the time, there’s always a “but.”

Like I said, the lessons got more specific as we got older. LGBTQ+ topics started coming up, especially as gay marriage began to take the country by storm. I was never brave enough to bring anything up (I didn’t really know there was anything to bring up, in fact), but during lessons on the Law of Chastity, it became impossible to ignore. I started noticing comments during the lessons we spent with the adults in our ward. And it all kept sinking in.

I was nineteen when I finally realized that I liked girls just as much as I liked boys. It had stewed in the back of my mind for years until I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I don’t remember what exactly caused the realization, but I remember the first time I ever came out to someone.

I was in a relationship at the time. We’ll call my boyfriend John.

John and I had taken a road trip from Oklahoma to Texas to see a doctor. It was a wonderful trip. I had fun both there and back, but the middle part is what I’ll remember for the rest of my life.

I still remember sitting in a gazebo outside the doctor’s office and I remember the overcast sky. I remember pulling my knees up to my chest to give myself some comfort and telling John that I liked girls the same as I liked boys.

I know I said it like it was something to be ashamed of because at the time, I didn’t know any better. I’d been taught that anything that didn’t directly follow God’s plan for me (marriage in the temple, family with kids) was something not to be acknowledged. I felt nervous saying it out loud, like I’d done something wrong.

John was great. He just hugged me and told me he loved me no matter what. It was the first time I came out. I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.

My relationship with John ended a while later and I felt only relief. I’d felt smothered toward the end. Every time he’d told me that he loved me, I would just sort of smile awkwardly and say it back to make him happy.

I realized that my interest in boys and girls was more of a disinterest in boys and girls. I was more aware of the different orientations covered by the LGBTQ+ umbrella and soon began to identify as asexual, while using the word queer for myself because I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure what my orientation was.

You ever buy a car of a certain color and then you start seeing that color car everywhere? Once I came out, I felt like I couldn’t get away from the homophobic comments at church.

Most of the time, I wasn’t even there for it. I got called to teach the three and four year olds every week, so adult interaction was few and far between for me. Still . . .

Every time someone brought up LGBTQ+ topics, my teeth were set on edge. I almost walked out of a lesson once because a man started raving about “the lesbians teaching our kids these days” and how Satan was in the schools now. I clenched my fists and wondered how he’d feel knowing that there was a woman attracted to women teaching the children of our little branch.

I decidedly ignored the wrench that my orientation had thrown into my beliefs. I told myself it didn’t matter. I knew the Church was true and I would stay faithful no matter what. How I felt about girls had no factor in that.

Things changed when I decided to serve a mission.

My LGBTQ+ friends worried about what I would do if something happened on my mission and, to be honest, I was worried too. I would be spending all day every day with another girl. What if I developed a crush on one of my companions? What if someone found out I was queer? I decided to pray for protection during my mission—protection from others and from my own feelings. I knew that serving a mission was something I had to do and I felt that God would help me get through whatever challenges came my way.

I served my mission in the Utah Provo Mission, an area densely populated with members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

The comments on my mission were the worst. We were taught in the Missionary Training Center that, as missionaries, we were supposed to be politically neutral. This meant basically ignoring anything that could be taken as politically charged, whether it was someone asking us a question or just making a comment where we could hear it. The fact that my sexuality was seen as a political standpoint riled me like nothing.

I heard the most disgusting things from people who would no doubt call themselves true followers of Christ on my mission. These things were said and perpetuated by both members of the Church I met as well as fellow missionaries I served with. One incident stands out in particular.

We were driving home after spending the evening at a member’s house for Fourth of July. We had a rule that said we had to be indoors after five pm and at home at nine on certain holidays to avoid injuries and other incidents. So, we spent the hours between those times together with a group of missionaries in our district (a group of missionary companionships, usually about three or four).

We had loads of fun. We watched Coco and played games. We talked about investigators we were teaching, about funny things that had happened to us and our companions while we went about our work every day. It was a good time.

When it was time to go home, my companion and I offered to give a trio of elders (boy missionaries) a ride to their apartment. They piled in and we were off.

Traffic was horrible, so, while we waited to get through the jam of cars in our way, we talked. To this day, I can’t think about what happened next without feeling an indignant fury I’ve rarely felt before.

I don’t know how we got on the topic. It was burned from my mind by the comment itself. All I know is that one minute we were talking and having fun and the next, one of the elders in the backseat dropped this bomb:

“They’re just so wrong. I hate everything gay people say.”

I froze. The car went quiet. You know that feeling when your face feels hot and cold at the same time? The shakes that come with it? It was there. I sat in my seat for a moment before I exploded. I whipped around and glared at him as hard as I could.

“So, if a gay person says that the Church is true, you hate it because they’re gay.”

“Yep.”

“I’m gay, does that mean you hate everything I say?”

“Yeah. I hate everything you say because you’re gay.”

No one else spoke up. Not his companion, not my companion. They just sat there and listened. I turned back in my seat, shaking like a leaf, and told him that that was the most un-Christlike thing I’d ever heard and that he ought to be ashamed of himself. No backup from our audience.

There were other incidents. Other times when I felt I would explode and spew righteous anger all over everyone in the vicinity. I think sometimes God held my tongue because He knew I needed to stay in an area longer and the people in it would never trust me again if I let them see how I really felt about their views.

My mission was not easy, but I am proud to say I survived and came out a better person. Of course, I got crushes on people, boys and girls. Missionaries do not exist in a vacuum, despite what some people might like to think. I even thought very briefly about kissing one of my companions once. The thought was ignored, and I carried on. I made it to the end and was released back home to my family.

During my mission and coming home, I started to identify more with bisexuality than asexuality, though I still to this day prefer the term queer to identify myself. I felt more comfortable with this orientation and started to feel like I’d finally found myself.

This brings me to a few months ago. I’d been home from my mission for almost a year. My drive to attend church, read my scriptures, and be an all over “good Mormon” had flagged a bit, especially after an incident I won’t get into here.

I was trying to organize a hangout with a friend and her boyfriend, when the boyfriend messaged me to tell me that they had, in fact, recently broken up. We talked for a little while and he called to explain things further.

I sat, listening to him cry over their breakup, and felt no connection at all. If anything, I felt like he must be over exaggerating how he felt. There was no way a person could really feel like that for another person, was there?

It hit me like a freight train: I didn’t feel or understand romantic attraction.

I’d always assumed I just didn’t love John as much as he loved me—I loved him but wasn’t in love with him—but I took a look at all my other relationships. The only other time a person told me they loved me, I was relieved when I had the excuse of my upcoming mission to stop seeing them. I wasn’t interested in having a boyfriend or girlfriend beyond the thought that it would be nice.

I’d always thought that the idea of romance was lovely, but in all practicality, there was no way that people really felt like that in real life. There was no way. Gushy people I’d seen in real life just had to be exaggerating. It was that oh-so-familiar feeling of “sounds fake, but okay” that had hounded me my whole life.

In that moment, I realized that I’m aromantic.

Up until this point, I think I’d been ignoring the fact that I wasn’t straight. Not like that. I acknowledged it in a way. I celebrated Pride every year and came out to my friends and family years ago. But . . . There’s always a “but” isn’t there?

I hadn’t truly acknowledged the part of me that wasn’t straight. In the back of my mind, I’d always had the thought that I would just marry a guy anyway and ignore my feelings for women for the rest of my life, like a good Mormon girl.

Realizing that I’m aromantic? I couldn’t do that anymore.

It’s funny because, despite the fact that as I grew older, I became more and more open to the idea of others being LGBTQ+ and having relationships outside the heteronormative spectrum, the idea that I could participate in these things was much slower in coming. In fact, it’s still coming. Twelve years on, and I still struggle with the idea that it’s okay for me to even think about being with a woman, while knowing it’s perfectly well that it’s just fine for others to do so.

I guess it just comes down to how I was raised. When you live your entire life being told that a certain way of living simply isn’t done, it sinks in whether you want to or not.

I realized I was aromantic, but I didn’t know very much about it. So, I did research. I found out about queer platonic relationships. That they exist gives me hope. I want a partner eventually, just not a romantic one. But the acknowledgement that I will never be in a “straight” relationship hurt more than it should have.

Just a week or two after this realization, the BYU protests hit the news. As I was trying to figure out what to do about my newfound orientation and what it meant for my faith, I was bombarded with the reactions of my congregation members to these protests for equal treatment. They joked about it. Laughed. They said that the LGBTQ+ students of BYU should have known better than to think that the Church would ever allow them to date on campus.

My recent realization that I’m aromantic made one thing clear. I can’t not date in a non-heteronormative way. If I want to be in a relationship, it will have to be a queer platonic relationship because romance isn’t an option for me. Even if I was with a man, that will still be the case.

I sought comfort from a friend who now lives out of state. She helped me through the dark days and continues to do so, but she has made it clear that any decision to leave the Church is totally up to me.

The thing is, I still don’t know if I want to leave.

The gospel has given me life. It’s given me hope. The principles that the Church teaches have gotten me through some of the hardest times of my life. I would literally not be alive today if it weren’t for my faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

There’s always a “but” though and the “but” is this: I’m now having one of the hardest times of my life because of my beliefs. Because my beliefs tell me that what I am and who I am is wrong and that I need to be fixed. And I know that’s not true. I know that God made me exactly how I was supposed to be made. I know that He loves me just as I am.

I don’t know what the future holds. I’m currently taking a break from the Church to take time and heal. I don’t know if I’ll be going back or when that might be. But I do know that my God loves me, no matter who or what I am. And that knowledge will never change.


End file.
